Wayne Swan Deputy PM and currently acting leader while Julia is on holidays, continues his attack on what he sees as looming inequality and social distortion. How far would he get in USA arguing for higher taxes and more spending on the disadvantaged?Sorry to criticise the USA but I think your politics and economy is pretty screwed up and I don't see how you are going to get out of it.Of course given the governments current polling it could just be a Hail Mary pass, but they have been acting like they care (goodle Australia NDIS)

And how about this, from the song Badlands on the Darkness on the Edge of Town album:

Poor man wanna be rich

Rich man wanna be king

And a king ain't satisfied

Till he rules everything.

When I listened again to that song recently it struck me that Springsteen could have been talking expressly about a few people that I've written about lately. Since my controversial essay was published in The Monthly in March I've been asked often whether I now regret having criticised some of Australia's wealthiest and most outspoken mining tycoons.

My answer is simple: no, I don't regret a word of it. Not for a second. In fact, my only regret is not going in hard enough, because every criticism I made has been played out almost to the letter on our national stage.

You will recall my original charge: that the rising influence of vested interests is threatening Australia's egalitarian social contract. I argued that a handful of powerful people not only think they have the right to a disproportionate share of the nation's economic success, they think they have the right to manipulate our democracy and our national conversation to gain an even bigger slice of the pie."